Why face-to-face still matters!

From the "Creating Passionate Users" blog, by Kathy Sierra

"We email. We wiki. We blog. We IM. We convince ourselves that as long as we can write well, these are all good forms of communication. Perhaps in some ways even better, since we're not distracted (blinded, biased, seduced) by the person's physical presence.
And we are wrong.

According to the neuroscientists, anyway. "

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How to Foster and Harness Your Organisation's Connectors

From the Anecdote: Connecting People blog, by Shawn Callahan

"I wrote this article with Stewart Forsyth from FX Consultants. Stewart and I have done a few projects together in New Zealand and it is always a pleasure working with him.

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While passers-by see the granite and glass of high-rise buildings, well-connected people think of the organisations within as collections of interesting people they want to meet. Mention a business and these "connectors" will spill out the names of key informants and decision-makers. Connectors know lots of people.

One of us worked once with a business developer who, no matter what south-east Asian city he was in, always had names and contact details of locals in his PDA. According to legend, he was once arrested and thrown into a cell for not having the appropriate visa, but he was out within hours - he wangled a call to a mate who had the right connections. Connectors have the happy knack of getting things done, often making it look so easy in the process.

Connectors such as these are the human circuit-makers through which ideas, opportunities and resources flow. They ensure that the products proposed by R&D teams can be made economically and will sell. They help their organisation to spot competitor activity and environmental shifts that present threats and opportunities to be managed. They pick up even the weak signals. In our view, the informal connections made by your people are more important than the formal channels in getting the job done. The benefits to your business are increased responsiveness and adaptability.

Our emphasis is not only on how these people work. We want to help you mobilise their capabilities, and so your organisation's capability. Specifically, how do you identify and develop people with connector potential?"

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Dawn Of The Idea Czar

From BusinessWeek Online

"Billy Edwards' colleagues at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD ) have called him their utility infielder. AMD's human resources chief Kevin Lyman calls him the chipmaker's agent provocateur. Officially, though, Edwards is called AMD's chief innovation officer, a newly created role for this senior vice-president.

Although Edwards, 50, has a PhD in materials science engineering and has worked around semiconductors for much of his career, he has also headed up strategy at the Sunnyvale (Calif.) company, run a startup, and worked as a consultant for The Boston Consulting Group. So when AMD formalized a role that would lead its innovation effort last September (or, as Lyman describes it, "put an 'X' on the back of someone to consciously drive it"), Edwards' diverse experience, gregarious personality, and penchant for disrupting traditional ways of thinking fit the bill. "A chief innovation officer needs to be this blend of marketer, technologist, strategist, and business person," says Lyman."

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A Question Culture

From the Innovate on Purpose blog, by Jeffrey Phillips

"Some ideas are so good that they can apply to many things. In this case, I am double dipping on an idea I got from Peggy Van Pelt who is the head of Disney's Imagineering group. I had the opportunity to hear and meet Peggy at the American Creativity Conference in Austin last week.

One of the things that she said struck me as really insightful. It's really a question of culture, and that is - do you have a Question Culture or an Answer Culture. She did not use these words - they are mine, but she did talk quite a lot about being willing to ask questions as one of the reasons that Disney does such a great job creating new ideas.

That got me thinking. In most businesses, you rarely want to ask a question, especially if you don't know the answer. Most lawyers know you should never ask a question you don't know the answer to. Asking questions can make it appear you are unaware of the issues, don't have the knowledge or are just out of the loop. In most businesses, none of these conditions is good for your career.

But what happens if you don't ask questions is that stuff gets taken for granted, or we accept the first proposal placed on the table. Without questions, no one probes the idea, turns it upside down and examines the margins.

Most businesses I am aware of don't have a Question Culture - they have an Answer Culture. That's because we are taught very early on that we should have the answer to the problems right at hand. Getting to an answer quickly is often rewarded in business, and having a plausible answer makes it appear we are "in the know". The problem with the Answer Culture is that ideas get the "one and done" treatment. An idea gets proposed and someone already has the answer - We've done that before or It won't work here or some other answer". Rather than ask questions and expand the discussion, we seek to quickly provide an answer and move on.

This is a vestige of the industrial economy, when management would receive a question from the hierarchy below and answer it. A quick, concise answer meant the shop worked well, on time and efficiently. However, the needs have changed. It’s not necessarily important to put ideas to bed as quickly as shop floor issues or transactional issues. Often we should ask questions about a challenge or a problem before putting forth an answer.

What’s the culture within your firm? If you reward an Answer Culture mentality, you’ll get a lot done very quickly, but miss the subtle opportunities that require more development. Try injecting a little more Question Culture thinking, especially when considering new ideas, products or services, to give new concepts room to grow".

CEOs Brimming With Ideas, Lacking In Organization

From Industry Week, by Tonya Vinas

"There's a reason why the CEO and secretary is as classic a pair as Martin and Lewis. A new study concludes that when it comes to creativity, CEOs have more than other executives -- they just don't have the organizational skills to take their ideas to fruition on their own.

PsyMax Solutions, a human capital assessment firm based in Cleveland, analyzed the behavioral profiles of more than 240 presidents, CEOs and chief operating officers from its database of work-style profiles of 11,000 executives, managers and staff-level employees.

High creativity, which includes innovativeness and risk-taking, was found to be the work-style behavior that most distinguishes today's presidents and chief executive officers, says Wayne Nemeroff, himself a CEO at PsyMax.

'CEOs diverge from 'normal' successful executives in various ways, creativity being the most important,' Nemeroff says. 'CEOs also tend to score well above average in their ability to advocate and sell ideas and in tough-mindedness, their resilience in the face of criticism.'

However, he says, the flip side is that, 'according to our findings, company heads are decidedly less organized than their subordinates. While CEOs may excel at addressing issues in an innovative, resourceful and imaginative way, they probably need a lot of support from others on their team to execute what needs to be done.'

That's why senior executives below C-level often have work styles that complement the CEO's, Nemeroff explains. 'Unlike their CEO, managers at the next level may be more collaborative or orderly. The wise CEO would be sure to be surrounded by people with such essential work-style behaviors and skills.'"